2016

Dear friends,

Thank you all for your wishes.

As another year passes by, i would like to share my experiences from the past year and would love to hear from you about your own learnings at work, travel and at home.

My work as a Field Engineer largely consisted of travelling to even more remote places across North East and providing a bit more high profile services to our clients here. While the global recession in the Oil and Gas industry has gotten worse, with no definitive turnaround in the horizon, the activity in North East has never been higher. Backed by government subsidies, PSUs are not only developing their fields across the North East, but also investing heavily in exploration projects to estimate the untapped potential of the land. Although the whole of North East is estimated to contain 25 % of the country’s reserves, it contributes to a little lesser than 10% of the output. Being a service provider, my company is in a bad state. In the last one year, the worldwide right-sizing has left about 20,000 employees jobless in Schlumberger alone.

Around August, i took the crucial decision to proceed with my plans to App after little motivation from self to study and much pestering from my professors. i applied to universities in the USA only for MS in Water Resources Engg. i’m happy to inform that i received admits from GeorgiaTech, UCLA, UIUC and Stanford. i look forward to make the transition back from worklife to college life and i’m excited to say the least.

The one thing i shall miss from work is the ample opportunities it provides to holiday. i travelled to Coastal Karnataka, Pondicherry, Indonesia, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Goa last year. i also successfully executed a cycling expedition to the highest peak in Western India and i’m preparing for the upcoming one which would be in North India.

i have a dream that I shall have a big library at home with my significant other and i have already started building a collection for it :) For me, books are not only a source of knowledge, but also a tool to assist self reflection. My favourite book from last year, that continues to bear its impression on me and forever will, is the Gita. It is not just a religious text, but the fountain-head of universal and ultimate truth. It teaches us to deal with the two “imposters” in life - triumph and disaster, and treat them just the same.

As a wish for my birthday, i would like to ask everyone to appreciate the importance of relationships. The longest study of happiness (which is still ongoing) made a vital revelation in 2015 with a sufficient confidence interval that the things that truly matter to humans, the things that has a direct impact on one’s happiness is the number and health of relationships one maintains. So please pick up the phone, and reach out to that friend from school/college who you’ve also thought of talking to but are shy to say sorry for some trivial issue. Catch a train/flight and spring a surprise on your partner? For a change, you call your parents and check on them rather than how it usually is. Because however brightly a piece of coal may be burning, it will soon burn out if you remove it from the flames. However intelligent a man may be, he will soon lose his warmth and his flame if he distances himself from his fellow man.

Thank you again for all your wishes.

They make me happy.

Krishna Rao